One of the most important polarities of the human being is a polarity between his physical and soul-spiritual part. One manifestation of this polarity is seen in the following rule: The origin of an internal physical illness must be looked for in an imbalance of man’s soul-spiritual life, while the origin of mental disorder must be looked for in an irregularity of a bodily organ or system.
If we look at the FOURFOLD HUMAN BEING – physical body, etheric body, astral body and ego – we can notice a polarity between the physical and etheric body on the one hand, and the astral body and the 'I' on the other. This polarity is crucial for the understanding of the origin of physical illnesses versus mental illnesses.
"There is hardly anything more confusing today than the distinctions that are so often emphasized between man's bodily nature and his soul and spirit, between physical illnesses and the so-called psychological and mental illnesses. This view of the relevant relationships and distinctions between such facts of human life as a diseased body and an apparently diseased soul suffers from the materialistic, atomistic way of thinking. The nature of this materialism does not lie in observing material processes, in looking into the material processes that also take place in the human corporeality, in reverently studying the marvellous structure and activity of the human nervous system and other human organs. This does not make one a materialist. Rather one is made a materialist through omitting the spirit from the study of these material processes, through looking into the world of matter and seeing only matter and material processes.
What spiritual science must assert, however, is this: wherever material processes appear outwardly to the senses – and these are the only processes that modern science will admit as observable and exact – they are but the outer manifestation, the outer revelation, of activities behind which and in which lie spiritual forces and powers.
Thus on the one hand we have all the physical illnesses. They are investigated by observing the abnormalities of the organs or the various processes that are thought to be of a physical nature and are to be found within the boundaries of the human skin. Then the goal is to seek to rectify what is found to be wrong. In this case, the view of the human body in its normal and abnormal conditions is completely materialistic. Then, on the other hand, there are the so-called psychological or mental illnesses. As a result of materialistic thinking, these are considered to be merely diseases of the brain or nervous system, although efforts have also been made to find their causes in the other organ systems of the human being. Because there is generally no conception of the way in which the soul and spirit work in the healthy human body it is impossible to arrive at a conception of the relationship of so-called mental illness to the rest of the human being. Spiritual science is able to show in detail how all so-called psychological and mental illnesses have their source in disturbances of the organs, in organ deterioration, in enlargement or shrinking of the organs in the human organism. A so-called mental illness arises sooner or later whenever there is some irregularity in an organ, in the heart, in the liver, in the lungs, and so on. A spiritual science that has penetrated to the point of knowing the spirit's activity in the normal heart is also able to discover in the deterioration or irregularity of the heart the cause of a diseased life of spirit or soul, called mental illness today.
There is no need for spiritual science to be afraid of showing how so-called psychological or mental illness is invariably connected with something occurring in the human body. Spiritual science must show emphatically that when merely a deviation from the so-called normal soul life is studied, the most that can be achieved is a one-sided diagnosis. Psychoanalysis, therefore, can never lead to anything more than something diagnostic, never to a real therapy in this domain. In mental illness, therapy must proceed by administering therapy for the body, and for this reason there must be detailed knowledge of the ramifications of the spiritual in the material. We must know where to take hold of the material body (which is, however, permeated with spirit) in order to cure the disease of which abnormal conditions of soul are simply symptoms. Spiritual science must emphasize again and again that the root of so-called mental or psychological illnesses lies in the organ systems of the human being.
Looked at from the other side, all those phenomena of life that seemingly affect merely the soul or work in the soul element – for instance, all that is expressed in the different temperaments and the activity of the temperaments in the human being, what is expressed in the way the child behaves, plays, walks – all this is studied today only from a soul-spiritual point of view, but it also has its bodily aspect. Faulty education of the child may come to expression in later life in some familiar form of physical illness. In certain cases of mental illness, we must often look to the bodily element and look for the cause there; however, in certain cases of physical illness, we must look to the spiritual in order to find the cause. The essence of spiritual science is that it traces the spirit right down into its material workings. Spiritual science never conceives of the material as modem science does today, but it always penetrates to the spirit in all study of the material. Thus it is able to observe that an abnormal soul life must inevitably express itself in an abnormal bodily life, although the abnormality may, to begin with, be hidden from outer observation." [1]
Whenever we search for the primal origin of a physical illness we will find it in the soul-spiritual imbalance – that is, in the astral body and/or human 'I' going astray in one way or another. And "the actual causes of psychological diseases have to be looked for in deformations of the organs. One gets nowhere if one merely takes into account the psychological symptoms. Similar psychological complexes can even be traced back to totally different causes of illness. Especially in so-called mental illnesses we are led more and more to deformations of the organs, to an organ that is not functioning properly" [2] – that is, we are led to the irregularity of the organs and systems which compose the physical-etheric part of human being. [3]
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